I live just north of 8 mile in a surprisingly decent area of Eastpointe (a suburb of Detroit). But I want to escape this area. My daughter will be starting school within two years and I have another one on the way.

My wife and I have hired a real estate agent and are currently looking at foreclosed homes. I already have a renter lined up for our current home, so I'm not worried about selling or walking away, etc.

Does anyone have any insights to purchasing a home now? Should I wait for the dust to settle? If I buy now, will the house just keep depreciating?

Thanks stratagos...sounds like I'm in a similar boat you were in. I actually got my wife interested in moving a couple months ago and she is excited...but now I'm not so sure. Needless to say she is pressuring me to buy now. We both want out, but the timing needs to be perfect...

keep in mind if you buy, you're not going to be easily able to *sell* for at least five years the way things are going, so don't count on moving again. The biggest limitation on me right now is I have limited options when it comes to moving, so I have to suck up three hours of driving daily. A perm position here is a no-go

@Darwyn - renting your old place out comes with it's own headaches. *You* are responsible to keep the house insured still (renter's insurance covers their property and any liability they may have, but if lightening strikes the house, it's you insurance pays) and you will be responsible for maintenance of things that are considered permanent fixtures (plumbing, electrical, HVAC, septic system, etc) and you'll still have to cover your mortgage even when the house is empty or the tenant falls behind on their rent.

@Draugnar, thanks! I'm actually very much aware of this because I am currently renting a place that I have owned since before I met my wife. So I'm already dealing with that headache already. The house we are currently in that we plan on renting has been almost completely renovated in the past 5 years...new roof, new garage, finished basement, new AC, new furnace, paint, etc. There's nothing major that *should* go wrong with it, so I don't anticipate that adding a second rental is going to be that much more of a burden. besides that, my father-in-law is a landlord/builder and is willing to help out when needed, so I have everything rental-wise covered.

@strategos - yeah, once we buy, we don't plan on moving again for a very long time, if ever.

Sounds like you've got your bases covered on the rental side and know what you are getting into. That's a good start.

I was in a documentary about foreclosures. its not out yet though

Being a squatter again, Sic?

Now now Draug, don't be so cynical! I'm sure Sic offers a well reasoned explanation of the root causes of the foreclosure crisis, leaning heavily on his exhaustive credentials in both finance and economics.

Its not like he has some bias against capitalism that will cause him to lay the whole mess at the feet of the bankers and real estate agents, and ignore the responsibility people have to understand what they are committing to. I am certain whatever he lays out will be willing to point out *all* the parties at fault in the crisis, not just those that mesh with his preconcieved notions.

You should be ashamed of yourself!

Ah, but remember, Sic doesn't think the banks have a right to take homes back (ala foreclosure) because he doesn't believe homes should be owned by anyone and, therefore, everyone should be allowed to live wherever they please.

which is why my home was free - the owner of the land gave up the title, and the construction company built it and the roads for free, all because I'm a hell of a guy! Pity they all starved to death since they worked for no wages, but, hey, free house!

And that's why my landlord doesn't actually make me pay the monthly payments on our landcontract. He doesn't really need the money and, besides, he can't actually own the .35 acres the house sits on.

" Pity they all starved to death since they worked for no wages," Well that's a few less of the 6 billion Sic needs to eliminate for his utopia.

you guys are a riot. and not the fun kind.

there is personal property and private property. Personal property are the things you use on an everday basis, they're yours. Like your fridge or car or house or cd collection. Private property is theft. Why should anyone own a house they dont live in?

So why make new houses? Or, for that matter, low income apartments? It's theft, after all, and I'd be an idiot to build something just so someone else could take it.

Sic, you can't solve all world problems with first-come-first-serve approach.

If you had a real life with things you cared about (wife, kids, family and all the property that goes with it) you'd know sharing and anarchy are not an option. You don't, and you clearly never had to take care about someone else or think about the future of your family, etc.

That's the same starting position that most fanatics and suicide bombers have - nothing to live for, nothing to lose, ready to bomb the planet to get their view across.

Dickheads, the lot of you. You're a nice guy and some of your causes are worthy, but this anarchy nonsense... weren't you going to emigrate to Somalia or something, whether they already have anarchy as the default regime? :P

At least you'll learn first-hand what you're preaching.

Somalia as anarchy? Hardly, it's states and extremist groups that intentionally keep somalia totally fucked. US, Al-shabab, etc. Left to their own devices i HAVE NO DOUbt they could solve most of their own problems. You know they DIY'd their own cell-phone repeater network? largest one stretches for miles and miles in every direction of mogadishu.

You're missing what I'm saying. What I'm not saying is that people should just be able to take, someone tries to take the place I'm living I damn sure wont just let them. My point is if you live in a house for 20 years it's yours. The only thing that makes it say, the banks is a little slip of paper that you both pretend means something.
Its like money, we all know its just paper that doesnt actually represent anything, we just all pretend its valuable and thorugh our collective consciousness it does, so that becomes reality.

This house is mine because I work for a company that has alot of pieces of paper, I mean money, and we have anothe rpiece of paper that says we own it.

This house is mine because I've lived here most of my adult life, raised two children here, dog's buried in the backyard.

Foreclosure related evictions? Come the fuck on. In the context of the worse housing crisis in memory, evicting families and creating more vacant homes in communities is counterproductive. These homes must be filled with families in need of housing.

Which you'll note doesn't answer my question: why should new homes be built if a) the banks that finance them 'shouldn't' be repaid if someone is living there long enough or b) should go to the first squatter if someone doesn't buy them immediately

They are building new homes as an investment scheme not because the houses are actually needed. Drive anywhere in wayne co. MI (you live close to there right?) Like 1 in 3 houses is vacant.

I'm just saying if you walk down the street and on one side theres an empty house, and on the other side someones sleeping on a bench in the cold, thats immoral.

So your thesis is that vacant homes should be seized and distributed to the masses.

That's nice and all, but still doesn't answer my question: what then? When all the vacant homes are nationalized and made cozy for people, where does the new housing come from?

lol you cant build a house?

and nationalized implies that these houses belong to the country. I'm saying they should belong to the resident.

far out wacky ideas huh? lik a community should control its own land? I must be some kind of queer pinko commie fag

Actually, no - I cannot build a house. I lack the skills. Or to be specific, I could probably build a house, but it would be unsafe, inefficient from an insulation perspective, would take labor that I can't also use to earn the income to feed my family. The concept is called "Specialization of Labor", and it's the same reason I don't build my own car - it would take far too much effort on my part to do a job that someone who knows what the hell they are doing could do in a tenth the time.

It also would require me to have the economic wherewithal to purchase all the raw materials *now*, instead of paying them off over 30 years.

Your second post is irrelevant, and continues to miss the point. Housebuilding is a specialized skill. No one is going to specialize in it if there is nothing in it for them.

Without overgeneralizing, the problem I see in many of the things you put forth is that they ignore the *consequences* of your ideas.

@strat

"Its not like he has some bias against capitalism that will cause him to lay the whole mess at the feet of the bankers and real estate agents, and ignore the responsibility people have to understand what they are committing to. I am certain whatever he lays out will be willing to point out *all* the parties at fault in the crisis, not just those that mesh with his preconcieved notions."

So, let's say a woman goes to a party where a man she finds attractive will be. She has a drink or two and flirts with him a little bit. He drops a couple of roofies into her second drink, then, when she passes out, rapes her and persuades several of his friends to also rape her. It seems as if you would say that it's her fault for going to the party, given the easy analogy to the widespread fraud on the part of the mortgage originators that is almost entirely to blame for the housing bubble meltdown.

@Sic - someone used their hands to build the house. Someone else supplied the materials. And yet someone else owns the land the house is built upon. You suggest that, when this house is built, all that just be given to someone and they not be required to pay for it? And if you say they should pay for it, then the bank or landowner comes into play. I don't know about you, but I didn't have 250 grand sitting around doing nothing when I bought my house on land contract. So, by extension, my landlord owns the house until I have paid it off in full.

If I understand your logic, you are saying that, after living there for 5 years, I should be allowed to continue living there even if I stop paying the landlord...

What if he decided to stop paying the bank or what if the bank decided to not pay the builder for the house and property or what if the builder decided not to pay his employees for building the house or the original landowners for the land or the lumber company for the materials he used building it? You can't pay all those people and *not* collect back on it or the economy collapses (like it did, duh!). You fail economics 101, supply and demand.

Um... unless I'm badly misreading the analogy, you're comparing asking for and getting bad loans (to pay for the house) to being drugged and raped. The woman didn't ask for rape or getting drugged. People asked for the loans.